[PlayStation 5] Girl Genius: Adventures In Castle Heterodyne Review (2025)

Girl Genius: Adventures in Castle Heterodyne by Rain Games brings the beloved graphic novel series to life in a new way. Dive into our review of this adventure and see if it managed to capture the essence of the original story.

As the Lost Heir to a mad family, she must return the ancient fortress to its former glory and ascend the throne as a “True Heterodyne”. Only then can she stand up to the might of the Wulfenbach Empire and other power hungry usurpers. But first, she has to contend with a corrupted and insane AI controlling the castle, its spiky death traps, and bottomless doom-pits. Not to mention the painfully pink cherry on top, Zola Heterodyne. Another lost child? Or just another villain here to steal your thunder.

Girl Genius: Adventures In Castle Heterodyne from Rain Games is a 3D action title inspired by the graphic novel series Girl Genius. For those unfamiliar with it, Girl Genius is a series created by Phil and Kaja Foglio, first launched in 2001. It follows Agatha Heterodyne on her journey through an alternate-history world. As for this particular game, it began as a Kickstarter campaign in 2020, aiming to raise $200,000 to develop the game for PC and Nintendo Switch. With support from nearly 4,700 backers, they exceeded their goal and secured over $250,000. Although the original plan was to release the game in 2022, it launched on PC in 2023 and on the Nintendo Switch earlier this year, before this PlayStation version.

As soon as I started playing, I had a complaint about the DualSense controls, which don’t feel natural to a PlayStation player. First of all, the controls themselves don’t feel very responsive. Also, the default controls aren’t standard, as attacking is tied to the L2 button instead of the Square button, and the controls feel a bit stiff, with attacks not being as fast as expected. You can’t jump unless you’re in a specific spot – which isn’t bad in itself, just something that felt a bit too old-school. You can also dodge by pressing the Circle twice.

Soon, you’ll get to control Dingbot, a handy robotic companion. With his help, you’ll get access to areas Agatha can’t reach right away. Then you’ll get him a mighty drill so it can dig through soft soil. Just be careful because enemies will always lurk in most areas, searching for Agatha and Dingbot! Need to heal? Simply press up on the D-Pad to use a potion to recover some of your health – assuming you have one available!

By breaking objects and defeating enemies, you’ll gather resources that can be used for upgrades and other in-game features. These resources allow you to, for example, enhance your wrench, increase the damage radius of its final combo hit, and later boost its overall damage. Once the healing potion is unlocked, you can invest resources to increase the number of potion charges and improve how many hearts it restores so that you can boost its healing power. Additionally, with the help of InkyPen, you can use resources to unlock Girl Genius comics within the game so that you can learn more about this clockwork steampunk story.

On the presentation side, this game looks a bit dated and feels like it could have been a late PlayStation 3 game. The model animations are basic, and walking doesn’t feel natural. I liked how the UI art style was original and that there are accessibility options like a clearer text font. There are also some oddities that seem to have been forgotten in the PC-to-console port, as there are game options for “mouse” and “keyboard” sensitivity that are not relevant for a PlayStation 5 game.

The game features a full trophy list with a shiny Platinum trophy for you to work on adding to your collection. The list includes 16 Bronze trophies, 11 Silver trophies, and 5 Gold trophies. To get that Platinum, you’ll need to repair the coffee machine, destroy 25 chicken clanks, destroy 15 fencing clanks, rebuild a scrap trap, find a total of 777 resources, locate all allies in Castle Heterodyne, destroy 5 Nyar spiders, launch a chicken clank by hitting it with your wrench and have its explosion destroy 3 enemies, upgrade the coffee machine to its highest tier, locate all Castle Heterodyne artifacts, finding all portraits, find all lore segments, and defeat each boss, to name some examples.

Girl Genius: Adventures In Castle Heterodyne is a 3D adventure game in which you’ll explore the aforementioned castle as you take on the role of Agatha Heterodyne, who must find a way to keep her identity secret while searching for the resources needed to complete her quest. Unfortunately, for some reason, the level design just didn’t click with me, but your mileage may vary, especially if you’re a fan of the source material. Girl Genius: Adventures In Castle Heterodyne is out on PlayStation 5 with a $29.99 price tag. There’s also a PlayStation 4 version of the game available as a separate purchase for the same price.

Disclaimer
This Girl Genius: Adventures In Castle Heterodyne review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Rain Games.